If you, like us, live in NYC and love an event celebrating authors of every ilk, PEN DIY is totally worth checking out. Each month, PEN America Center hosts an author to speak o the craft of writing: “Building on oral traditions, parables, and the rich history of artists as unpretentious makers, PEN DIY celebrates how literature can be approachable yet unexpected, and how it can help us make sense of our lives. Read More

Writer and motivational speaker Robin Korth recently wrote a piece titled “My ‘Naked’ Truth” on Huffington Post this summer, speaking about her experience in online dating. The now, nearly 60-year-old radiant lady is someone full of poignant (and funny) stories with a side of female empowerment!
On her blog she talks about how she spent the first 51 years of her life living for other people. The idea of what is expected from women of all ages due to gender roles is down-right frustrating and crippling. Read More

I came across Roxane Gay’s literature while I was deep in the clutches of ADD. But when I found her short story “The Year I Learned Everything” while poking around the web, I could not stop reading it from start to finish. Gay was there for me when I needed a voice to shout without dominating; she had true grit, without embellishment or pageantry. When I finished, I couldn't believe that the story was classified as fiction—her ability to convey the full spectrum of human emotions so effortlessly made my cheeks burn.
Recently, I headed to The Last Bookstore in L.A. Read More

I like to think of Mary Roach as Queen of All Things Awkward. Her publications include Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, in which she addressed practicing cosmetic surgery on cadavers, crucifixion experiments and human head transplant. She also wrote the book Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal, whose chapters included “Big Gulp: How to survive being swallowed alive” and “Stuffed: The science of eating yourself to death. Read More

I wouldn't call it "regret" exactly but in a recent interview J.K. Rowling admits to selfish motives regarding the beloved romance between 2/3rds of our favorite trio.
From the hybable article on the matter:
“I wrote the Hermione/Ron relationship as a form of wish fulfillment. That’s how it was conceived, really. For reasons that have very little to do with literature and far more to do with me clinging to the plot as I first imagined it, Hermione ended up with Ron.”
Betrayal hurts. Read More

From the moment I saw I Was Told There’d Be Cake on the bookshelf, I knew Sloane Crosley was a girl after my heart and taste buds. As a 17 year-old, I have looked to my fellow New Yorker’s escapades as letters from an imaginary older sister. Although I am interested in a career as a style journalist, I also am very interested in keeping up with all of my mini-essays that I hash out in my own diary.
Sloane herself is part anthropologist, part diarist; she is acutely observant of the people, places, and things, around her....she knows her nouns. Read More